Balance Ideas (Unit Changes)

[Faello]

Really? Versus a 9-2 pierce with 5-3 fire, it's less total damage (9-2 = 18 = 6-3, and 5-3 beats 7-2), and it gets less of a boost at night (7-3 for 21 damage instead of 11-2 for 22). How would this be more of a boost?

I meant the general raise of pierce to 6-3 you propose - I meant mostly Northeners vs. Drakes matchup.

It's also important to acknowledge the fact that 7-2 is sometimes better than 5-3 (who cares if strong elvish fighter 6x4=24 anytime when 12x2 from strong,res grunt can deal all of the damage he deals during the powerphase in the attack, when strong, res elvish fighter will do only 6dmg out of 24 when defending)

So the total amount of damage is not necessarily the most important factor.

And to clarify - I don't support the 9-2 change.

I would be against adding negative traits to a unit, unless all of that units traits are negative. It would still seem strange to me to have orcish archers have a unique trait or trait set from all other orcs.

We already have such "positive" exceptions (heavy Infratry - fearless, troll - fearless), I honestly don't see a problem here/this matter looks like artificial obstacle.

I personally agree that 9-2 would be too strong which was why I mentioned 8-2 as a compromise, I think TBS either mistyped or misread me. I think it makes little sense for fire arrows to have more strikes than regular arrows so I was thinking that keeping the fire arrows the same as they are now would be best.

This will lead to more situations in which Northeners army will be off from 0/0 RNG - counting on 2/2 from archer vs 40% cav is luck oriented gamble, and 1/2 with 8-2 pierce is hardly superior to present predicted 2/3 out of 5-3 vs 40% def cav

[monochromatic]

What if we increased the Archer to cost 15 gold and then buff the ranged pierce to 9-2? (Or possibly even 10-2)

[Faello]

What about 4-4 instead of 5-3 ? (6-4 instead 7-3 vs. cav during night), would be similar to poacher.

[tekelili]

What about keep orcs flavour and low orc archer cost to 13?

It would be strange for me buff him at his current cost and have a better archer than humans for same cost.

EDIT: I must admit dont know what impact would have this on UD vs Orcs match up

[Faello]

Simple lowering cost of orcish archer isn't enough.

I think I've said what I had to say about it in this topic - 4-4 pierce 7-2 fire is actually better than thinking about some variation of 5-3 to 6-3 with stable 7-2 fire, considering that cav will get some nerf (it would be also easy to explain why crossbowman has only 3 attacks after archer lvl up - because it's crossbow not a bow)

[Velensk]

I dislike the idea of having negative trait exceptions because unlike positive traits that will always have some circumstances where they are advantageous, a unit that is unfortunate enough to roll a negative trait will always be at an inherent disadvantage. Sure, some traits such as strong on archers, quick when you need staying power, ect will generally be less advantageous than others in most situations but there is absolutely no reason why you would ever need a 'bad aim' archer compared to a archer without that trait, absolutely no way to get any advantage from it whatsoever and no way to affect your odds of getting it with any recruit.

Going from four strikes to three is still a case of RIPWLIB, a unit should not ever be at a disadvantage after leveling, a level 2 orcish archer should not have less of a chance of finishing off an enemy with 3 hitpoints than a level 1.

I agree that 8-2 is not ideal but it would still solve a dynamic issue. At night, 12-2 from 3 hexes would be a fairly reliable kill on any cavalry regardless of traits.

[Kolbur]

I'm all for buffing the orc archer a bit (it's the worst Northerner unit so far, except when fire damage is needed) but the proposed changes here are not well thought out. 9-2 pierce, seriously? That's the damage output of a thunderer, only more reliable! Oh no wait, orcs actually have a power ToD so it's potentially even more. I just pretend I haven't read 10-2 somewhere...

No no, if you really consider to upgrade his pierce damage it's either 8-2, 4-4 (doesn't really fit flavor wise) or maybe 6-3 but that's already pushing it, anything more is overkill.
8-2 pierce becomes 12-2 at night vs cav (more like the thunderer damage again!) and 10-2 vs 0% resistance. That's quite a lot already, almost on par with the grunt damage but ranged.
With 4-4 you essentially have a poacher now...
6-3 becomes 9-3 at night vs cav and 7-3 vs 0% resistance, also quite powerful (reversed loy archer ).
Maybe even up the archer cost to 15 when upgrading the damage since all damage upgrade variants are quite a big change imo and we should not forget he still has the fire damage too.

If you think about also changing the fire arrow you better figure out the effect vs all the fire weak enemies out there (wose, HI, ghost, saurians).

[Rigor]

very nice reply kolbur. with a 6-3 archer id be more likely to suicide my gobos into cavalries even with 44 hp and the resists we have right now (given that an archer is around). 15 or 16 gold isnt too much for such a valuable change, there wouldnt be floods of archers around - rather grunts. since we all know how fast u have to put factions such as loys or drakes under pressure, and how awesome they become in the late game, it might be a nice comeback unit for orcs during the late game, when u already have a few archers and a strong troop body to face a large army of exchangable defenders/attackers.

[Faello]

I agree that 8-2 is not ideal but it would still solve a dynamic issue. At night, 12-2 from 3 hexes would be a fairly reliable kill on any cavalry regardless of traits.

What about dealing with thieves and fencers? 8-2 is a buff to the damage output (max 24 instead of present 21 vs. cav) but nerf to the faction ability to spread the damage... I don't think this would suit Northeners.

8-2 pierce becomes 12-2 at night vs cav (more like the thunderer damage again!) and 10-2 vs 0% resistance. That's quite a lot already, almost on par with the grunt damage but ranged.
With 4-4 you essentially have a poacher now...
6-3 becomes 9-3 at night vs cav and 7-3 vs 0% resistance, also quite powerful (reversed loy archer ).
Maybe even up the archer cost to 15 when upgrading the damage since all damage upgrade variants are quite a big change imo and we should not forget he still has the fire damage too.

Comparing orcish archer that would do 12-2 vs cav/10-2 vs. rest to thunder is pointless, since archer would do this amount of damage only during the night while thunderer is neutral and orcish archer defensive capabilities and resistances are not even near the level of the thunderer.

But you have a point here Kolbur, I think this might be a solution and would also help Northeners in the late part of the game, just as Rigor stated.

If we want to hold to RIPWLIB, than it would be better to just go to fixed 6-3 pierce 7-2 fire dmg and think if archer should cost 15gp. (16gp seems to be artificial overpricing, similar to wolf being overpriced now when compared to, let's say, cavalry)

This idea has my support

[Scatha]

Just to throw out another idea regarding the Orcish Archer:

There was mention of decreasing its cost or increasing its hitpoints, as a general buff. While these don't increase its offensive capacity against Cavalry, they make it an all-round better unit so help the Northerners to field several, which in turn makes Cavalry a bit less dominating.

A similar possibility would be to increase their melee attack. This is 3-2 at the moment, which actually seems bizarrely low. The only mainline units which are worse are Dark Adepts and Mages, with Poachers and Elvish Shamans on a par. Flavourwise I think there's something nice about Orcs being bad at archery, but the other side of this is that they should be not terrible at melee.

So I propose buffing the archer by changing its melee attack to 5-2, or 3-3 (both still pretty weak attacks), and in either case to change the Orcish Crossbowman from a 4-3 melee attack to 5-3. I think this would make the archer more generally recruitable, which would help the match-up.

Actually, a thought just occurred: is the Orcish Archer's attack so low for campaign reasons? As in, orcs are a popular enemy in beginner-level campaigns, and having a very weak melee attack helps to teach players to attack it with melee units?

[Velensk]

I think it would be odd for orcish archers to cost more than human archers for having the same ranged damage and less hp/melee damage. I'm still not fond of the idea of the orcs being equal in archery to everyone else but there is a limit to the number of graceful solutions here.

[grrr]

... 8-2 ...

+1, been saying this for years 8 is one of those magic numbers where you get all the nice TOD and resistance bufs. And it doesn't degenerate too badly over day (this is actually one of the missed key points I think - proper cav play can force northies into fighting over stolen villages during *the day*).

*-2 strike fits the northie style, and you still have gobos, dogs, nagas and assassins if you need more strikes.

[Colouredbox]

I would be against adding negative traits to a unit, unless all of that units traits are negative. It would still seem strange to me to have orcish archers have a unique trait or trait set from all other orcs.

Making it so that all orcs are stronger but get negitive traits rather than positive is an idea I'm not overly fond of.

I personally agree that 9-2 would be too strong which was why I mentioned 8-2 as a compromise, I think TBS either mistyped or misread me. I think it makes little sense for fire arrows to have more strikes than regular arrows so I was thinking that keeping the fire arrows the same as they are now would be best.

Reason to have more fire arrow strikes:
The stupid orcs are afraid of fire so they just wanna get rid of the burning arrows so they just shoot them as fast as they can.

Also imo cavalrymen are too powerful vs orcs just to keep in the topic.

[MRDNRA]

I dislike the idea of having negative trait exceptions because unlike positive traits that will always have some circumstances where they are advantageous, a unit that is unfortunate enough to roll a negative trait will always be at an inherent disadvantage. Sure, some traits such as strong on archers, quick when you need staying power, ect will generally be less advantageous than others in most situations but there is absolutely no reason why you would ever need a 'bad aim' archer compared to a archer without that trait, absolutely no way to get any advantage from it whatsoever and no way to affect your odds of getting it with any recruit.

Going from four strikes to three is still a case of RIPWLIB, a unit should not ever be at a disadvantage after leveling, a level 2 orcish archer should not have less of a chance of finishing off an enemy with 3 hitpoints than a level 1.

I agree that 8-2 is not ideal but it would still solve a dynamic issue. At night, 12-2 from 3 hexes would be a fairly reliable kill on any cavalry regardless of traits.

Mixing negative and positive traits can lead to some weird occurrences too. Having played almost the whole of the Invasion from the Unknown campaign, I have on 2 occasions in that campaign seen traits that cancel each other out, one was "quick, slow" I can't remember what the other one was. Hence I also would be against adding negative traits in for just that reason.

I had an idea of possibly changing orc grunt damage type to pierce, but abandoned that as it would be such a big change, and wouldn't really fit in anyway.

Has the possibility of reducing cavalry resistance to blade damage by 10% been discussed?

[Madlok]

In 1.96
Unit changes and balancing:
* Increased the pierce attack of the Orc Archer from 5-3 to 6-3.
* Decreased the HP of the Cavalryman from 38 to 34.
* Decreased the HP of the Dragoon from 53 to 49.
* Decreased the HP of the Cavalier from 68 to 64.
* Changed the 'feral' trait to give 50% instead of 40% defense on villages.